Re: Collation implementation

["Martin v. Loewis" <martin at loewis dot home dot cs dot tu-berlin dot de>]

> Right.  That is of course the responsibility of the implementator
> of locale()::locale() and of setlocale().  (Note that std::setlocale(),
> and even ::setlocale(), need not be the same function as found in 
> libc.so.)

Right. The standard does not mandate that programs can be combined by
sticking translation units of ISO 14882:1998 and ISO 9899 together.

However, any self-respecting implementation of C++ should provide that
kind of interworking, and I definitely would want g++ to be such one.

> You are assuming that somebody has suggested these things not be
> done.  But those things are precisely what Dietmar suggested to do.

I'm fine with Dietmar's proposal of accessing the system locale
databases through a common interface. It's Shiv's proposal of
integrating ICU that I feel uncomfortable with.

> The actual Standard C library is only a tenth as large as the Standard
> C++ Library.  Re-implementing just the necessary parts (a much smaller
> fraction again) would not be a very big job.

Counting the number of lines in glibc 2.1.3, I get 1,148,374. Counting
those of libstdc++-v3 in today's CVS, I get 120,561. What makes you
say a C library is only a tenth of a C++ library?

> This is not to say that duplicating functionality is a good.  However, 
> given the attitude we are encountering it may be necessary if we are
> to achieve what we want.

I'm not sure what you want to achieve. Conformance to some written
standard is not all there is. People don't use a compiler just because
it conforms to a standard. Instead, they want to get their job done.

Regards,
Martin